The gods thew one of their favorite barriers in front of Sam Freeman towards the end of last season as his elbow developed soreness towards the end of the year. Offseason rest didn’t do the trick and he’ll need to undergo ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery. That means his career goes on the shelf for 18 months, which means he’ll be 25 in baseball years when he returns to prospect consideration.

Sam’s an undersized lefty from Texas, drafted in the 32nd round of the 2008 draft by the Cardinals, three rounds ahead of Scott Boras’ son, who went unsigned. He finished his collegiate career at Kansas, where he didn’t pitch to good results. He walked as many batters as he struck out (while hitting 4), allowed nearly a hit and a half per inning, and gave up four home runs in 31 and 2/3 innings.

He was promoted to a full-season team late in his draft year, striking out a combined 38 hitters to 13 walks. Last season, he split the year between the pitcher-friendly Florida State League and the hitter-friendly Texas League, striking out a combined 47 batters in 56 innings. He was basically in line with Carmen Cali for the hopeful left-handed relief pitcher on the way.

Because of the injury, he’ll have to pick up where he left off next year. Here’s hoping he sticks with it and does everything you can do to improve as a pitcher short of throwing a baseball. There are several members of the current big league club who can give him plenty of advice on how to spend his time in rehab.

As is my wont this time of year, time to make some crazy guesses about how the Cardinals opening day roster will look. Here’s my first stab at it:

Rotation

The top four starters are locked in, barring catastrophe or unexpected atrophy. The fifth starter looks to be a race between K-Mac, Mitch Boggs, Rich Hill, and Jaime Garcia. I expect Garcia will get looks but won’t start any games in Spring Training and that the organization would prefer to see him pitch in AAA for a while before calling him up unless he’s undeniably the best of the candidates to help the Cardinals win. I like Mitch more than most Cardinals fans, believing him to have a good fastball (especially out of the pen) and a good slider (neither of which are uncontroversial beliefs), but also to have a good, if underutilized curveball. I like those three weapons enough that I think he can be effective enough in the ‘pen to handle both lefts and rights and am confident he’ll pitch a few meaningful ninth innings this season in the Lou. I’m a K-Mac fan when he’s pitching in middle relief or as fireman. Of those four, I’d be most interested in seeing Hill start.

Rich Hill strikes me as a classic Duncan reclamation project, with plus pitches (especially the curve) and a history of high strikeouts and almost-as-high walk rates. As I’ve argued many times, the Duncan philosophy as I understand it is transparently DIPS-friendly: throw strikes low in the zone with movement away or down from the batters hands (sinkers and cutters) to get ground balls and avoid the home run; and throw them in the zone to avoid walks. Sacrificing the strikeouts that will happen when you pitch somewhat more predictably is worth it if you can lower your walk and home run rates by even smaller rate differentials. Walks and especially home runs are weighted sufficiently more greatly than strikeouts that the strategy works if you can get the pitcher to take something off his fastball in exchange for movement and control to hit the spots.

I guess the rotation will then be:

Carp — Wagonmaker — Penny — Lohse — Hill

Regular starters

Nothing fancy here:
C:  Yadi
1B: el Hombre
2B: Skip
3B: David Freese
SS: B-Ryan
LF: Legolegs
CF: Razzle
RF: Lud

Bench

Here’s where things get interesting. Our starting lineup has two left-handed bats in it, so we need some lefty options on the bench. Preferably two: one a contact hitter who’ll take a walk and one a power bat. We positionally need, at minimum: a catcher, two middle infield utility men, a backup CF, and a corner IF-OF who could legitimately fill in at 3rd for stretches if Freese gets in the doghouse.

Backup catcher is ‘Stache Larue. One of the middle infielders is Julio Lugo, who may serve as Skip’s platoon partner if he struggles against lefties, which makes Skip a possibility for the contact-lefty bench bat in a set of situations.

The real competitions, then, are for the corner IF-OF, the CF, and the other utility infielder. One of these men should bat southpaw with authority.

The best two candidates I see for backup middle infielder are Tyler Greene, a RH SS who hit pretty well in AAA last season and Ruben Gotay, a switch-hitter who led the PCL in OBP last year and who hits far better from the left side. Gotay isn’t quite up to the task of backing up short… But neither was Miles. Gotay is on a minor-league contract with an NRI and Greene has options, so there’s no contract situation to put one over the other. Purely a skill-set call: is Greene’s ability to man short competently more valuable than Gotay’s versatility?

To backup CF, you’d want a good defender, preferably a right handed batter in case Colby Rasmus struggles against left-handed pitching (which I’m fairly unconcerned about). The candidates are Jon Jay, Shane Robinson, and Joey Bombs. Jon Jay’s the best defender by a long shot but is the only of the three to bat lefty. Shane’s scrappy and played well in ST last year in a hilarious call-up from minor league camp (he’s a slight fellow and was wearing a uniform that was several sizes too big in every direction in his first game. But also hit a home run and made a dazzling defensive play in left.) Joey Bombs is a behemoth who didn’t look lost to me in the very small sample I’ve seen him play center. Joe Mather also is recovering from wrist surgery, so his batting may not be quite up to the level expected of a being his stature. My guess would take the competition down to Jay and Mather, and here it comes down to the question of whether Jay’s better defense is more valuable than Mather’s right-handedness to complement Colby.

For the corner utility man (the Spiezio role), the obvious in-house candidate is Allen Craig, who hasn’t OPS’d under .850 since short-season, but whose defensive ability at third-base is in apparent ill-repute. I never had a chance to see him field at third so have no reason to dispute that with any credibility. Joe Mather’s another possibility, perhaps more likely here than as a backup CF, as he arrived at camp last year ready to compete for third base with Glaus out before injuring himself. Another candidate who I think is still a slim possibility and would be a good fit is Eric Hinske, who signed a million dollar contract with the Braves. Hinke fits the role and bats lefty. I don’t see how he fits in with the Braves this year and could see a swap possibly happening. I’ll ignore the possibility henceforth and consider the competition between Mather and Craig.

So here are some possible scenarios, leaving out Lugo and Larue who won’t be contested for contract reasons, barring meltdown:

Mather beats out Craig, Gotay for versatility, Greene for acceptable backup SS
Mather (CF, SPEEZE) — Gotay (IF) — Greene (SS)

Mather beats out Craig, Jay as backup CF
Mather (SPEEZE) — Greene (IF) — Jay (OF)

Craig beats out Mather
Craig (SPEEZE) — Greene (IF) — Jay (OF)

TLR likes switch-hitters
Craig (SPEEZE) — Gotay (IF) — Jay (OF)

I ordered them with respect to how likely I believe each to be: I think Mather’s wrist will need a few more months of healing time, Gotay’s a pretty fine replacement-level pickup who can backup third just fine to push Craig to third-string there, and Rasmus looks comfortable against LHP.

Bullpen

Franklin’s installed as closer and the left-handers are locked in. The rest is somewhat wide open. I’m assuming a 7-man bullpen, which is hopefully what we’ll end up with, which leaves four spots for a number of contenders. As I said before, I’m a fan of Mitch Boggs and think K-Mac will be in the bullpen. That leaves room for a middle-relief right-hander and a long-man (if it’s not McClellan, especially if he stays stretched out to start in a late competition for 5th starter). I’d guess Motte and Hawksworth. Eduardo Sanchez had a great season, but walked AA batters at double the rate K-Mac did before making the leap to the MLB. I expect Garcia to start at AAA to start the year. Charlie Zink would be neat, but won’t put money on the knuckleballer over the fireballer. I expect Ben Jukich to be returned once the starters get stretched out. I’ve always liked the Darren Oliver style lefty long-man and think if Jukich makes the roster at all, it’d be in that fashion. I incidentally think that’s a pretty good way to use a Rule 5 drafted starter, who tends to see plenty of low-leverage innings.

Franklin — Reyes — Miller — Boggs — Kyle — Motte — Hawk

It’ll be pretty exciting to see whether Craig and Jay can perform at the top level as well as many of use have hoped for a long while.

The Giants designated Luis Perdomo for assignment, which means that he’ll pass through waivers then return to the Cardinals’ farm system with all his option years intact. From Chris Haft’s article:

Perdomo, 24, owned a 3.48 ERA through 10 Cactus League appearances. But his lack of command in his final three outings unnerved the Giants. In that stretch, he yielded five earned runs, allowed nine hits and walked three in 1 2/3 innings. He finished with a 6.75 ERA to go with 17 hits allowed and eight walks in 12 innings. Perdomo’s likely to return to the St. Louis Cardinals, who lost him to the Giants in last December’s Rule 5.

I thought it unlikely that Perdomo would stick with the Giants after they overpaid for a few veteran RHRPs in the offseason, and even less likely when they announced that they’d use an 11-man pitching staff. The Giants eventually chose to take 12 pitchers North West with them, and Perdomo, fortunately for the Cardinals, will not be among them.

Perdomo’s selection in the Rule 5 had caused some amount of consternation with well-informed Cardinals fans. We traded Anthony Reyes, our top pitching prospect from a few years ago, for Luis Perdomo. That Mo left him unprotected last December—with open spots on the 40-man and Matt Scherer was added after having a slightly less impressive season, albeit at a higher level—was a move worth questioning. Mostly, I think, the Perdomo drama had to do with latent frustration over Anthony Reyes’ loss of fastball velocity and lack of a secondary pitch to use against right-handed batters.

In any case, Mo was right. His gamble preserved an option year for Perdomo, who will certainly be added to the 40-man next winter if he isn’t traded away from the distinct depth the Cardinals farm has in its advanced RHRP corps, especially now that Jess Todd (WWDUA) has joined it. I suppose there’s a chance that another team claims Perdomo, but I find it hard to imagine a team finalizing their opening day rosters and then changing their minds and stiffing one of their own prospects for the chance that this guy can make it all year.

Matthew Leach has the rundown.

I think that I guessed pretty well. I nailed the pitching staff, except for my failure to guess that the FO would pick up Dennys Reyes as a second lefty specialist.

Everybody I guessed would be in the infield for the opening day roster was correct, except the Cards are carrying Joe Thurston as a lefty utility guy. I thought that Mather and Barton would make the team for a good one-two punch of power and on-base/running skills. I still think Barton will help the team more than, say Brendan Ryan. I think I agree that Ryan’s chances of clearing waivers will be improved by a month on the major league roster and Barton will benefit from a month of everyday work at AAA. So I can sort of see the reasoning at work if I squint right.

Here’s hoping my breakout candidate breaks out indeed. I’m debating whether to announce a minor-league sleeper to watch after the last one got cut, much to my surprise, while I was down in Jupiter.

It only took them a little under three years to take my advice, but the Cardinals today got around to signing Dennys Reyes.

Reyes is a stud against left-handers, but has some trouble against righties. Hopefully he’ll be protected a little better than Ron Villone was last season.

I’m going to pick a player to have a very big season in 2009, causing immense confusion for a lot of Cardinal fans wearing #54 t-shirt jerseys.

Here are a couple of age-25 season lines:

These aren’t completely dissimilar lines from similarly sized (5’11″, 190-195) right-handed batters who bounced around the infield as minor leaguers. The two players hail from the same organization, in fact, and Player B was in AAA during Player A’s age 25 season, although a year younger.

After his age-25 season, Player A was taken in the Rule 5 draft, and ZiPS projected a .231/.302/.363 line for him that year. He far exceeded it, batting .282/.339/.480 with 27 HR in his rookie season. Player A is, of course, Dan Uggla and many Cardinal fans would be delighted if Mo would trade away valuable prospects for him now that he’s 29 and an established major league slugging 2B. Player B is Brian Barden—after his age-25 campaign in 2006, his OPS fell below .800 for the first time at AAA and he fell out of the Diamondbacks’ plans. After he was DFA’d, the Cardinals picked him up and he’s been a utility man in Memphis.

I don’t think that Brian Barden is going to have a season like Uggla had in 2006 or do to the league what Uggla has done, but I think he’ll be a useful piece on the 2009 Cardinals and am rooting for him to make the team. Barden’s slick with the glove, so the defensive dropoff from Kennedy to Barden would be negligible in the amount of playing time we’re likely talking about. He’s also an excellent defensive 3B and can play shortstop competently (i.e. far better than Miles, doubtfully as well as Ryan). He has power potential: he hit 9 HR last season in Memphis and hit 15 and 16 in consecutive years as his prospect star shone most brightly in 2005-2006. He’s right-handed, so would platoon well with Kennedy (in the PCL last season, his platoon split was .266/.325/.394 vs. rights and a robust .326/.400/.481 against lefties, although his career minor league splits aren’t quite that drastic.)

Brendan Ryan has an option year remaining and Barden does not, so as long as Barden shows up to camp ready to swing the bat, I expect he’ll make the team as the backup MIF, with Freese the starter at third, and six outfielders heading North when Spring Training ends. Last Spring, Barden went 2-11 with 2 walks. I expect he’ll get a longer look this go around and will be rooting for him all the way.

(As for that .231/.302/.363 line ZiPS projected for Uggla in 2006, league multipliers are a bastard… Barden is projected to go .254/.307/.359 this year. Here’s hoping he revives his career and surpasses those rates by a great deal.)

Baseball season can’t get here soon enough, but until then, we have Look Around You to keep us informed and entertained. And that reminds me of this.

Update: What the hell? The Cardinals are releasing Adam Kennedy… I did not see that one coming…

Per the irreplaceable Derrick Goold:

Mozeliak said the intent is to fill the position “from within the organization.”

Club says B-Ryan, Thurston, Barden, T. Greene and, yes, Schumaker are candidates. Free agents Hudson, Durham and Grudzielanek still unsigned.

It took me about ten minutes, but I’ve warmed to the idea. A Thurston/Barden platoon at second would cost twice the league minimum and produce quite a bit while providing good defense and positional versatility. Thurston hit .316/.367/.456 with 11 HR and 19 SB last season for Pawtucket.

Updated 4/14/2009: It looks like I’m full of it and Brian Barden was not on Arizona’s 40-man prior to the 2006 season. I’m pretty confused about why he was DFA’d by two teams in 2008, though…

Derrick Goold reports that Matt Clement won’t be ready for opening day and that he’ll likely go on a rehab assignment to get back into the routine. That means that my most recent roster prognostication is wrong in at least one place: the starting rotation. I’d guessed it’d be [Wainwright, Looper, Clement, Piñiero, Hawksworth], Blake Hawksworth being a long climb out on a thin limb on the reasoning that unless Reyes has an excellent Spring, the team would avoid bouncing him up and down from Memphis and that giving a young pitcher a shot for the month or so that Mulder’s out would be a fine idea.

Clement’s signed to a guaranteed major-league contract, so if he were sent on a rehab assignment to start the season, he’d need to be called up to the big club within 30 days of the assignment. The Memphis and Palm Beach seasons both start on April 3rd—30 days from then is May 3rd. Clement could potentially be out for the first month. There’s no word on when Mulder will be available, but I’m guessing he’ll be sent on a rehab assignment whenever that is. Let’s say he starts his rehab at the end of April and he comes up in mid-May. That’s two starters needed for the first month and another for the first month and a half to two months.

Before, I’d guessed the bullpen as [Izzy, Springer, Franklin, Flores, TJ, Wellemeyer, Castellanos], with Castellanos the inaugural holder of the Token Funky Delivery Guy role after narrowly beating out Worrell. I suppose a more realistic opening day pitching staff would include Brad Thompson in the long-man role with Wellemeyer moving into the rotation. There’s talk of Perez making the team out of Spring Training, which would certainly be exciting, although while spoiling my dreams of a permanent funky delivery guy in the ‘pen. It’s hard to imagine that one of the best five starting candidates out of the group not including Carp, Mulder, and Clement wouldn’t be Anthony Reyes, so I’ll guess this staff:

Rotation: Wainwright, Looper, Piñiero, Reyes, Wellemeyer

Bullpen:Izzy, Springer, Franklin, Flores, Johnson, Thompson, Perez

When Clement joins the team, either Wellemeyer goes to the ‘pen and bumps the least effective reliever or Reyes returns to Memphis.

Later on that evening: Two articles of interest popped up.

This one has Bryan Anderson and Jaime Garcia returning to AA for 2008.

The second says Kyle McClellan and Blake Hawksworth have caught Dave Duncan’s eye. Sounds likely there’s a chance for a solid AAA pitching staff, at least.

It came out a while back that Anthony Reyes has an option year remaining, in spite of the fact that he’d spent time in the minors the last three years while on the 40-man roster. I thought that maybe I’d misremembered that he’d spent fewer than 20 days in the minors last year. He was sent down on May 27th and brought back on June 16th, so that’s 19 days. But he was sent down again from the 2nd to the 28th of July. That’s not the loophole he’s passing through. (Perhaps to his misfortune, some would think.)

Turns out that you need to be in your fifth pro season in order to be out of options. Reyes was brought up in his second professional season for four appearances in 2005. This will be his fifth pro season, so he doesn’t have enough service time to pass through waivers if the Cardinals choose to send him to the minors at any time this season. That’s something to keep in mind if Mortenson makes huge progress and gets called up for a start this year. The Cardinals wouldn’t be risking anything in terms of losing the player to waivers by bringing him up in 2008 versus 2009, although the service time would count towards his arbitration eligibility.

I was ignorant of that fifth-season clause. I’m glad to be slightly less ignorant now.

Episode I of this year’s off-season roster prognostication is here, in which I speculated on how the 40-man roster would be handled heading into the Winter Meetings, which concluded with the Rule 5 Draft.

In this post, I’ll make an early guess of what the active 25-man roster will look like at the break of Spring Training.

Certain spots on the roster are all but guaranteed, barring injury or trade. Those are in the list below:

• Starting Fielders
• C: Yadier Molina
• 1B: Albert Pujols
• 2B:
• 3B: Troy Glaus
• SS:
• LF: Chris Duncan
• CF:
• RF: Rick Ankiel
• Bench
• C-IF: Scott Spiezio
• M-IF:
• C2: Jason LaRue
• OF4: Ryan Ludwick
• OF5:
• Pitching
• S1: Adam Wainwright
• S2: Matt Clement
• S3: Braden Looper
• S4: Joel Piñeiro
• S5:
• CL: Jason Isringhausen
• RHRP: Russ Springer
• RHRP: Ryan Franklin
• RHRP:
• RHRP:
• LHRP: Randy Flores
• LHRP:

The team has contested spots for three middle infielders, two of which must be able to field at short; two outfielders; a starting pitcher; and three relievers, presumably one of them being a long man and at least one a left-hander. I’m assuming that Chris Carpenter, Mark Mulder, and Josh Kinney will start the season on the disabled list—although Kinney has options and can be get his form back in the minors at his own pace. I doubt that Josh Kinney will start the year on the 25-man roster and hope fervently that he won’t go the way of Mike Lincoln and fail to contribute again after TJ.

The left-hander competition will be between Tyler Johnson and Ron Flores, my money’s on TJ.

The two outfield spots will be fought over by Skip Schumaker, Brian Barton, Joe Mather, and Colby Rasmus. I like Skip and Barton to win out, with Rasmus playing everday at Memphis to start the year and Joe hopefully continuing to cream the ball at AAA. I expect both to come up at some point during the year depending on injuries and how well Skip and Barton perform.

As for the middle infield, it’s gonna be Miles as the bench-guy, Kennedy at second and Izturis at short, with Ryan starting the year at Memphis unless one of Izturis or Kennedy are so bad in ST that they get cut. I don’t see Hoffpauir or Jose Martinez as factors to start 2008.

The fifth starter should only be holding down a spot until Mulder comes off the DL, presumably in early May. It’ll be a competition between Todd Wellemeyer, Anthony Reyes, and Mike Parisi. I’m hoping for Reyes to win the job, but there may be a push to keep from yo-yo’ing him between AAA and the bigs that would (irrationally, IMHO) keep him off the 25-man. (He’s got an option year remaining, counterintuitively.) Just to go out on a limb, I’ll say that Blake Hawksworth earns an early season shot as the fifth starter, Todd Wellemeyer becomes the long-man in the ‘pen, and Hugo Castellanos becomes the first in a long-line of funky delivery Cardinal relievers.

You will notice that there is no room on a team with 12 pitchers to carry Josh Phelps as a backup 1B/emergency catcher, as Jeff Gordon seems to think will happen. Only if he beats out Spiezio, making Miles our backup 3B. Fat chance of that. Phelps becomes the 2008 version of Tagg Bozeid—everyday 1B at Memphis and backup to Pujols if he goes on the DL. Spiezio will be Pujols’ primary backup, with Chris Duncan third on the depth chart at first.

I’m so excited.

I’m.

Scared?

Matthew Leach covered the outfield this week. I’ve got to say, I may be more excited to see what Brian Barton does this Spring than what Colby Rasmus can do. (And I get to spend a few days at ST this season for the first time ever.)

We’ll need a leadoff hitter this year, and Barton’s never had a professional full-season with an OBP under .404… If he can maintain that skillset against the best pitchers working today to the tune of .350 or higher, we’ll be in good shape this year. He’s fast and has a little powah, too.

And he’s probably the only person in the history of our species who was forced to decide whether to be an astronaut or a professional baseball player at the age of 22. (The rest of us cross that bridge when we’re 4 or so.)